Mick Jones: Stayin' In Tune - The Unauthorised Biography

by Mick O'Shea

  Mick and Don would get to meet Keith's Glimmer Twin, Mick Jagger, when the Stones' frontman dropped by the Irving Plaza with David Bowie to check out BAD. Nor was the New York residency a one-off occurrence, as BAD also enjoyed a seven-night stint at the Roxy in Los Angeles. It would appear that having realised the benefits to be enjoyed from playing residencies compared to the drudgery of criss-crossing America playing scores of shows whilst with The Clash, Mick now preferred to book a show at a low-key venue in a major city and keep the next few nights free should the need arise. And the group's growing popularity on the US college radio circuit ensured word quickly got around town.

  Later that summer, BAD served as support to U2 on the European leg of the latter's world tour to promote The Joshua Tree. Playing to sell-out stadium crowds was awe-inspiring for Don and the others, but Mick, of course, had seen and done it all before – albeit playing in support of The Who.

  Although the tour gave BAD massive exposure in previously untested countries such as Italy, Sweden, and Switzerland, there were undoubtedly times when Mick must have heaved a wistful sigh for what might have been. Don certainly makes mention of his sharing a knowing look with Mick whilst U2 were on stage, and rumour has it that at one show, Bono – on seeing Mick watching from the wings – jabbed a finger at the crowd and hollered, 'This should be you!'

  While BAD were out traversing Europe with U2, they garnered unwarranted exposure via US media following the arrest of two high school students in Hudsonville, Michigan, on terrorist charges. Believing the youths had been influenced by watching films and listening to rock music, the Hudsonville police conducted raids on their homes and impounded various items as evidence – including a copy of This Is Big Audio Dynamite, which, of course, showed Mick clutching a stick of dynamite.

  Following Sony's appropriation of CBS at the beginning of the year, March 1988 saw The Clash back in vogue – not to mention the album charts on both sides of the Atlantic – with the release of the retrospective 28-track compilation album, The Story Of The Clash, Volume 1.

  'I Fought The Law' had also crept into the UK Top 30 following its re-release the previous month. Perhaps not surprisingly, given that it was a 'best of', the compilation is biased towards those songs released as singles during The Clash's career. Even less surprisingly, given that Mick (with assistance from Tricia Ronane) had been permitted to compile the track-listing as a conciliatory gesture from Joe and Paul, Cut The Crap wasn't represented.

  While reviewing the album, Rolling Stone's Elliott Murphy punningly-opined that 'The Story Of The Clash is a story that ended too soon…,' but although the title hinted at a volume 2 being released at some point in the future, there were no thoughts of The Clash reforming to record new material.

  The royalties accrued from sales of The Story Of The Clash, Volume 1, would come in handy, but the irony wouldn't have been lost on Mick that while the compilation album was riding high in the charts BAD were having to watch the pennies while recording their third album. Having initially toyed with the idea of calling the new album Dread Astaire, they finally decided on Tighten Up, Vol. 88 in homage to Trojan Records' Tighten Up reggae compilation album series from the 1960s. Indeed, such was the plight of the group's finances at that time that Mick and Don were forced to hole up in Mick's home studio to work on song ideas before the group as a whole entered Beethoven St. Studio in west London to begin recording the album for real.

  Another cost-cutting exercise came with the artwork featuring a Paul Simonon painting of a blues party held within the shadow of Trellick Tower, a monolithic high-rise on Harrow Road. These days, of course, Paul's work is in high demand but at the time of the album's release he'd only just returned to painting.

  The hope that BAD had carried through from the previous year was dented somewhat when 'Just Play Music' b/w 'Much Worse' – the lead single from Tighten Up Vol, 88 – failed to even the breach the UK Top 50 following its release in May. However, the title of the B-side was to prove lamentably apt when the parent album stalled at number 33, some twenty-two places lower than No. 10, Upping Street, and five lower than the group's debut.

  In hindsight, the single's falling by the wayside could be put down to its being inferior to other tracks such as 'Mr Walker Said', or The Battle Of All Saints Road', but the underlying reason for the album's relative poor showing was due to Mick being rushed into hospital midway through the all-important promotional UK tour after inadvertently contracting chickenpox from four-year-old Lauren.

  'We were three-quarters through [the] tour when I noticed these spots on my throat,' he explained in September 1989. 'By the time I collapsed and was taken to the hospital it had turned into pneumonia. I was in intensive care, totally out of it for seventeen days. The doctors said later it was touch-and-go for a while.'4

  Mick was completely unaware of it at the time, but the hospital he was rushed to following his collapse was St. Mary's in Paddington; a familiar landmark back when he was struggling to put a group together in the basement of the café opposite.

  While BAD had been out on the road promoting Tighten Up, Vol. 88, Joe was traversing the country on the Rock Against the Rich Tour with his ad hoc outfit, Latino Rockabilly War. Unlike Mick, Joe had suffered no anxiety over dipping into The Clash back catalogue to bolster his set-list – albeit predominantly Clash covers such as 'Police On My Back', Brand New Cadillac', and 'Police And Thieves' – but at various stop-offs he'd also play either 'V Thirteen', or 'Sightsee MC!' – Sometimes playing both numbers on occasion.

  During the early stages of the tour an upbeat Joe would shout out the opening line to the song before offering a dedication to 'the guys in Big Audio Dynamite' in obvious celebration of his having worked with Mick on No. 10, Upping Street, but following Mick's hospitalisation the dedication took on a more solemn tone.

  The Rock Against the Rich Tour had gotten underway with a benefit show for Green Wedge (a Green Party fund-raising venture) at the Tabernacle in Powis Square on Friday, 17 June. Ironically, or serendipitously, depending on one's point of view, the following day saw Latino Rockabilly War and BAD appear on the same bill at an Amnesty International benefit at the 50,000-capacity Milton Keynes National Bowl.

  According to LRW guitarist Zander Schloss, when they hit the stage and launched into 'Police On My Back' he saw a befuddled Mick come running onto the back of the stage thinking he's missed his cue. It's a colourful anecdote, but with it being five years since Mick had last played the Equals song, Schloss is obviously over-egging the pudding at seeing Mick come out to catch the performance.

  Mick would of course pull through, but it was a classic case of out of the frying pan into the fire as he contracted an undetermined bug – possibly MRSA – and had to be moved to the hospital's AIDS ward. 'When I came to, I was very Gandhi-like, very pale and weak, a bit delirious, feeling love for everyone around me,' he continued. 'I had lung damage, couldn't speak and there was so much nerve damage I couldn't move my hands or walk.'5

  After his too-close-for-comfort brush with death Mick would undergo something akin to a rebirth as he would spend the next nine months of rehabilitation with physiotherapists and speech coaches. 'I'd been paralysed and I never thought that could happen to me, no one ever thinks they could get that sick,' he said in another American interview three months later. 'When I finally was able to pick up a guitar again and play, I cried. I realised that not only was I nearly dead, but the band was nearly dead after the last album,' he continued. 'When I finally got out of the hospital, I didn't want to make a record that was full of misery. The main point was that we wanted to make a celebration of life.'6

  ♪♪♪

  The 'celebration of life' Mick is referring to was encapsulated in BAD's fourth studio album, Megatop Phoenix, released in September 1989. Mick was out of action for months on end, but Don and the rest of the group hadn't exactly sat idle and had got together to demo song ideas ready for when Mick was finally able to (in Don's words) 'come in and sprinkle his magi
c over the tracks.'7

  With Joe co-producing No. 10, Upping Street, and Paul having contributed to the cover artwork on Tighten Up, Vol. 88, Megatop Phoenix brought another Clash link of sorts with Mick inviting Bill Price to Ray Davis' Konk Studios in Tottenham Lane, north London to help with the production on the album. The Kinks, of course, had featured heavily on the soundtrack of Mick's adolescence, and he'd been a proud card-carrying member of the group's fan club. Such was Mick's admiration for Davis that Don remembers it being the only time he ever saw Mick slightly star-struck.

  While Mick had been struggling along the allegorical road to recovery, kids up and down the country were traversing Britain's highways and byways for real in search of secret location, round-the-clock parties – or 'raves', as the new acid house dance craze that was sweeping the nation was known. Whereas punk bands such as The Clash had stripped music back to its rock 'n' roll its roots, acid house had taken punk's DIY ethic to the extreme by largely doing away with musicianship altogether. Instead, the organisers would hire a disused barn or a field from a farmer and have a DJ blasting out hypnotic dance tunes from dusk till dawn.

  Just as he had done with punk rock a decade of so earlier, Mick readily embraced acid house. 'The kids want better value for their money,' he explained in 1989, whilst out on the road promoting Megatop Phoenix. 'They don't want to be crowded into some stadium, roughed up by the security, with overpriced T-shirts and cold hot dogs, and then kicked out at 11 p.m. They want a place where they can party all night.

  'The secret nature of the acid parties makes 'em exciting,' he continued. 'When you buy a ticket, there's no location printed on it, just a phone number you call to find out the location. Most are held in big fields out near the airport… As for the musical mix at acid parties, it's liberal and diverse.'

  Regarding the album itself, Mick said the tracks were perhaps more positive and personal than previous BAD albums. 'We used to talk in headlines, recounting news stories,' he explained. This time we mostly looked inside ourselves for the information. We tried to simplify the music, make it more clear so that everyone could hear every word. It's still dense in terms of having a lot of content, but it has clarity of vision.'9

  In keeping with Megatop Phoenix's dance orientated theme, BAD invited the up-and-coming acid house DJ, Adamski*, a.k.a Paul Adam Tinsley, (who was promoting his debut album, Liveanddirect), onto their Autumn UK tour. There was, however, a rather more familiar face within the line-up of the tour's main support act, Havana 3AM. Whilst tearing around the Texas border on a couple of rented Harley Davidson motorcycles, Paul and his best friend, ex-Whirlwind frontman Nigel Dixon, had fallen in with a rough-and-ready biker gang, which included ex-Sex Pistol Steve Jones amongst its number. And on recruiting Dallas-born guitarist Gary Myrick, they became something of the gang's in-house, roadhouse group.

  With several record companies expressing interest in Havana 3AM, the trio returned to London where Paul kindly invited Topper to renew their killer rhythm section partnership. Topper, however, was still incapable of thinking beyond his next fix, so the vacant drum stool had gone to Travis Williams.

  New groups such as 808 State, KLF, and The Shamen were all pioneering the acid house rave wave, but Megatop Phoenix proved Mick was still capable of keeping apace with the modern pulse beat. The NME went so far as to declare the album his closest to capturing the mood of the times since The Clash, while Pulse magazine's Andrew Goodwin declared Megatop Phoenix to be the group's finest work so far, commending the combination of acid-house beats and reggae basslines.

  The lead single 'James Brown' b/w 'If I Were John Carpenter', which featured sampled dialogue from Mr. Sex Machine himself, surprisingly failed to chart, but the album not only improved on its predecessor's placing on the UK chart, but also reached a very creditable number 85 on the Billboard chart, which must have made it all the more perplexing for Mick when Don, Leo, and Greg tendered their resignations to form Screaming Target.

  It could be argued that the seed of Screaming Target first took root while Mick was laid up in hospital as Don and the others had too much time on their hands, but away from the onstage camaraderie, BAD were going through all the usual clichés and dramas, and creative and financial arguments that seem to afflict every group at some point. 'We ended up at one point talking to each other through lawyers, and all this stuff,' Don explained in 2008. 'But if you know anything about rock 'n' roll you'll understand that's almost part of the process. And the very fact that lawyers get involved means, "Hey, there must have been something good to fight about in the first place." I got to write some great songs with Mick. I got to be in a lawsuit with Mick. Brilliant!'10

  Dan Donovan would initially remain loyal to the BAD cause, but would also defect to Screaming Target shortly into the New Year leaving Mick the dubious honour of having been kicked out of one group he'd formed, and abandoned by the other. Further estrangement then followed with Daisy calling time on their six-year relationship.

  The Eighties were drawing to a close and within those ten years Mick had endured enough highs and lows to last several lifetimes. The last eighteen months had been particularly tumultuous, as he'd lost his group, his girlfriend, and had very nearly lost his life. So as the chimes of Big Ben rang out to usher in the new decade, the only question Mick had to ask himself as he toasted the future was whether his glass was half full, or half empty…

  * * *

  * Owing to Cox's eleventh-hour decision to rename the film Sid And Nancy, the 'Love Kills' single stalled at number 67 on the UK chart. (BACK)

  * In May 1990, Adamski would score a UK number one with 'Killer', which he co-wrote with the then unknown Seal, who also sang on the record. Coincidentally, Seal had worked in an unofficial capacity at Beethoven St. Studio where BAD recorded Tighten Up, Vol. 88. (BACK)

  – CHAPTER SIXTEEN –

  SWITCHIN' ON THE STROBE

  '["Should I Stay Or Should I Go"] wasn't about anybody specific, and it wasn't pre-empting my leaving The Clash. It was just a good rockin' song; our attempt at writing a classic. When we were just playing, that was the kind of thing we used to like to play.'

  – Mick Jones

  MICK MAY HAVE BEEN downhearted over the BAD exodus, but with Megatop Phoenix being the first Big Audio Dynamite record to make an impression on the Billboard chart he was far from down and out. If anything, he was in a stronger position than the one he found himself in after being kicked out of The Clash because with BAD he'd proved he'd been on the right track with his vision for The Clash whereas Joe's had crashed and burned.

  Taking friends who couldn't play but looked cool out of the equation, just as he had after picking himself up off the floor first time around, he opted for three relative unknowns from the Notting Hill music scene rather than bringing in named musicians whose egos might bring problems further down the line. The new guns for hire were guitarist Nick Hawkins (who sadly suffered a fatal heart attack in October 2005, aged just 40), Gary Stonadge on bass, and drummer Chris Kavanagh, who was perhaps the best-known of the trio having enjoyed a taste of fame with Sigue Sigue Sputnik. Mick initially intended to keep trading as BAD, but when this surprisingly brought the threat of legal action from Don and the other founder members he was forced into a rethink. Viewing the new line-up as a sequel to what had gone before; he opted for Big Audio Dynamite II.

  BAD II received an unexpected boost when the very much underrated 'Free' – the last song the original BAD line-up had worked on together – was commissioned for the soundtrack to a new action-comedy caper called Flashback*, starring Dennis Hopper and Kiefer Sutherland. On the back of this, 'Free' was issued as a US-only promo single in the hope that the resulting exposure among cinema audiences would see the track take off in the clubs. When this sadly didn't come to pass, 'Free' was given a Mick Jones makeover and subsequently reappeared as the track 'Kickin' In' on the new group's debut album, Kool-Aid.

  Taking a break from recording the album, BAD II made their live debut
at the Alexandra Palace in north London on 10 August 1990, as part of the Town & Country Club's fifth anniversary celebrations.

  The following month saw Mick return to the Top Of The Pops stage providing his inimitable guitar style and backing vocals on Aztec Camera's 'Good Morning Britain', which reached number 19 on the UK chart. (Mick would also put in guest appearances at certain venues on Aztec Camera's subsequent tour to perform the song)

  Kool-Aid, which Mick co-produced with his cousin Andre Shapps, and Olimax (a.k.a Oliver Maxwell), hit the record shops at the beginning of November, and continuing the acid house party theme of Megatop Phoenix, the track-listing featured song titles with obvious drug-inferences such as the aforementioned 'Kickin' In', and 'On One'. The vivid album cover was also in keeping with the acid house craze, while the group members are credited as 'Some bloke' (Mick), 'Some other bloke' (Hawkins), 'Some other other bloke' (Stonadge), and 'Some other other other bloke' (Kavanagh). Though an obvious attempt at levity, it nevertheless goes to show that some blokes are created more equal than others.